VMWare Fusion 2.0.7

This is a long question and I'm not sure where I need to go for answers, so please read carefully and suggest forums where I could get the best answers, if any, for this problem.

It appears that I need to update VMWare Fusion from the version 2.0.7 installed on this MacBook which is running Leopard 10.5.8. I bought the update for Fusion and it tells me I cannot run it on the OS currently in use. At the time I could have updated the OS to 10.6.x but it would have been an extra expense that I couldn't afford at the time. Now it appears that I can't do that update any more - is that correct? I clearly can't go to 10.7 without first going to 10.6, and also need to know if the VMWare Fusion update I have will work on 10.7 or will it need upgrading again?

To further complicate the issue, the virtual machine is a Windows XP system that has a C drive and a D drive, but is currently not working. I want to back up the data on the D drive but don't know if there is a way to do that?

I had to have a larger disk installed - 500GB instead of the original 160GB drive, which has a working version of the VM, but I don't know if I can transfer that back onto this hard drive as a second VM and if so if I could then get it to read the D Drive information from the crashed VM? Where do I need to post these questions to get some VMWare experts to help me sort out this mess? The data is critical, it includes things I will really need before year end.

All help appreciated!

It appears that I need to update VMWare Fusion from the version 2.0.7 installed on this MacBook which is running Leopard 10.5.8. I bought the update for Fusion and it tells me I cannot run it on the OS currently in use. At the time I could have updated the OS to 10.6.x but it would have been an extra expense that I couldn't afford at the time. Now it appears that I can't do that update any more - is that correct? I clearly can't go to 10.7 without first going to 10.6, and also need to know if the VMWare Fusion update I have will work on 10.7 or will it need upgrading again?

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Which Fusion update did you buy? You could have updated to Fusion 3.X or 4.X so we need to know that info before determining whether it will work with Lion or Mountain Lion. In the meantime, Snow Leopard is still available from Apple Customer Support. Contact them via their 800 number and order it direct. The cost should be $29.99 plus shipping.

To further complicate the issue, the virtual machine is a Windows XP system that has a C drive and a D drive, but is currently not working. I want to back up the data on the D drive but don't know if there is a way to do that?

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What exactly is not working in Fusion? Can you run the Fusion program at all?
If you can get the VM running, you can share the data on the D drive and copy it to a folder in OS X.

I had to have a larger disk installed - 500GB instead of the original 160GB drive, which has a working version of the VM, but I don't know if I can transfer that back onto this hard drive as a second VM and if so if I could then get it to read the D Drive information from the crashed VM? Where do I need to post these questions to get some VMWare experts to help me sort out this mess? The data is critical, it includes things I will really need before year end.

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I'm not sure if the new VM will be able to "see" the crashed VM and read the data off drive D. That's a question you can probably ask in the VMWare Fusion Forums. There are some real sharp folks who hang out there that probably can give you some answers. You'll have to register first (it's free). Here is the link to their forums: LINK

Let us know how it turns out.

1. The update was FUS4-M-PRO (Fusion v4)
2. Fusion runs but fails to start the VM. It sits for a long time with a message "loading". On previous occasions it has given error messages but I can't elaborate as i don't recall what they were.
3. The original HDD has the same machine cloned to it but it was working at that time. The Geek Squad installed the 500GB Western Digital drive and cloned the original mac drive to it, so the VM on the original drive will have the same name and details etc. except for the disk sizes which were increased on the new drive (originally 40GB each I believe but now 45GB) Geek Squad hasn't been able to start the VM or recover the data other than to transfer the clone from the old drive to the new one. The D Drive data is stored AFAIK in 2GB segments but they are encoded in a way that makes it impossible for an outside program to copy the data in unencoded form to an external drive (I have a new 2TB Seagate GoFlex drive but it is not set up to use as a Mac backup although when it is connected the Macbook can transfer and read files e.g. Word files in a suitable app. I could mount the old drive in a USB carrier that accepts SATA drives so presumably I could copy the VMWare from it to the Macbook. But it would have the same names etc as the files already on the Macbook so would probably overwrite them and hence destroy the data I want to retrieve. What I need is some program that will find the VMWare Fusion files on the current clone, decode them, and back them up to the external drive. BTW the My Documents folder was moved to be on the D Drive on the current HDD but had not been on the old drive so is on C on that one. Any ideas? I've used the VMWare forums in the past but there are so many of them it's hard to find out which would address this type of question.

Martinwill38 said:

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3. The original HDD has the same machine cloned to it but it was working at that time. The Geek Squad installed the 500GB Western Digital drive and cloned the original mac drive to it, so the VM on the original drive will have the same name and details etc. except for the disk sizes which were increased on the new drive (originally 40GB each I believe but now 45GB) Geek Squad hasn't been able to start the VM or recover the data other than to transfer the clone from the old drive to the new one. The D Drive data is stored AFAIK in 2GB segments but they are encoded in a way that makes it impossible for an outside program to copy the data in unencoded form to an external drive (I have a new 2TB Seagate GoFlex drive but it is not set up to use as a Mac backup although when it is connected the Macbook can transfer and read files e.g. Word files in a suitable app. I could mount the old drive in a USB carrier that accepts SATA drives so presumably I could copy the VMWare from it to the Macbook. But it would have the same names etc as the files already on the Macbook so would probably overwrite them and hence destroy the data I want to retrieve. What I need is some program that will find the VMWare Fusion files on the current clone, decode them, and back them up to the external drive. BTW the My Documents folder was moved to be on the D Drive on the current HDD but had not been on the old drive so is on C on that one. Any ideas? I've used the VMWare forums in the past but there are so many of them it's hard to find out which would address this type of question.

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I think, from your description, that you said the original was unchanged and booted. If so, then how about connecting the old drive to the Mac, then opening VMWare, select "File" then "Open....: and navigate to the old image on the old drive and booting it? That won't mess with the new image on the new drive. If that old image boots, you can copy the D: drive to some other location. What I might suggest is that BEFORE you do that, you copy the entire folder that holds the image on the old drive to some other location so that if all else fails you still have that version untouched.

From the description, it sounds like the image is damaged, and got that way when it was moved. If that is the case, if the approach I recommended does not work, VMWare MAY be able to recover the files for you (probably for a fee, if they can do it at all), but short of that, your only hope is that the original drive image is still good.

Thanks for the idea, but if I open the old version, its D drive is not the one containing the data I want to copy. Can I get it to recognize the new D drive on the Macbook while still running from the old C image? If so what would it show up as? Can I actually boot the clone that is on an external USB drive connected to the Macbook? Or is there a way to investigate what the clone on the Macbook is doing when I try to boot it and what is stopping it from booting?

You had said in the original post:

I had to have a larger disk installed - 500GB instead of the original 160GB drive, which has a working version of the VM, but I don't know if I can transfer that back onto this hard drive as a second VM and if so if I could then get it to read the D Drive information from the crashed VM? Where do I need to post these questions to get some VMWare experts to help me sort out this mess? The data is critical, it includes things I will really need before year end.

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I took from that sentence that the 160GB drive had a working image, whereas the 500GB drive image won't boot. Otherwise, the two images are the same. You cannot get one image to read files from another image. But if the files you need are on the 160GB drive image, then you can get those files. The only way to read the 500GB drive image drives is to get the image to boot.

If the files you need are NOT on the old image, then I suggest you contact VMWare directly. The issue is most likely NOT in OSX, it's in the image file, or VMWare. Look at their website for a support forum. That's where the VMWare experts will be.

And I would suggest you make copies of the folders where these images are stored before messing with it much more. Every time you try, you run the risk of doing further damage.

OK, below the virtual machine folder PCG-GRS150_7-6-09 there are these files listed:
In the folder, M57720.lck Today 12:24 pm
Below it:
PCG-GRS150_7-6-09.vmdk.lck Today 12:24 PM
PCG-GRS150_7-6-09.vmdk Saturday, November 12, 2011 5:56 PM
" " "-f001 through f030.vmdk Saturday, November 12, 2011 5:56 PM
(some dated Thursday November 3 2011)
I presume these are the data D drive since they are later than the other files:
PCG-GRS150_7-6-09(2).vmdk and -s001 through s014.vmdk all Monday July 6 2009 9:58am
and at the bottom
Library Thursday, September 29, 2011 2:38 PM

All the files are grayed out except for the top folder.
If I can copy these files to an external hard drive is there any way to decode the data?

How can I backup the virtual machine files to my external drive?

To back up, just copy the entire folder to the external drive. The image is just a file to OSX.

You cannot determine what the various .vmdk files individually. VMWare writes out the entire virtual machine in the various files. VMX files are the configuration files, VMSD and NVRAM files are memory states and vmdk are disk files. But the files are not saved as individual drives, but as one long binary file that is then assembled by VMWare into what looks to the virtual machine as physical drives. You cannot assume that later dates are the D drive because if anything changed on the C drive that day, it, too will be stored in the files. They are divided into 2GB chunks because VMWare assumed a FAT drive that cannot hold that much. On my OSX system, all my drive data is in one 32GB file that gets parsed at boot and rewritten at shutdown. The tow files of some interest are the LCK files. LCK is typically used as a locking file, whose presence indicates to the application that it cannot ope something because it is locked down. The fact that they exist on your system when VMWare is NOT running may be the problem. If in fact VMWare is NOT running (not the Windows, just VMWare itself sets the lock files in place), then I would suggest you try moving the lck files somewhere other than those folders and then see if VMWare can boot the virtual machine. Give it time to finish. If you do have VMWare running, the lck files are ok, but according to the times on the files you listed, VMWare started about 12:24 today, your time.

EDIT> Don't delete the lck files, just move them. You may need to move them back if VMWare complains for any reason.

How can I copy these files/folders? Mac doesn't have a "Windows Explorer" like function AFAIK. I can'even locate them to copy them. And I don't know how to move the .lck files. Please give VERY specific step by step instructions on how to do this!

Finder is the equivalent of Explorer. Use Finder, go to your documents folder and look for a folder called "Virtual Machines." In that folder you will find the files. To copy them, there are multiple choices for you. Easiest is probably to open a new Finder window (File/New Finder Window), then drag and drop from the folder to the external drive. The file will be copied over. Before you move the lck files make sure that VMWare is NOT running. Not just that Windows isn't running, that VMWare is not running.

Just curious, if you cannot locate the files, how did you provide the list three messages back? That looked like it came from finder.

Yes I did have Finder open, but couldn't figure out how to copy the files. Finder is open but completely unresponsive/very slow to respond. I may have to reboot the Macbook. Rebooting - Firefox was open and I had to force quit that. Copying the folder 78 GB est. time 52 minutes, 39 remaining. Also have an image that is 151.81GB so expect that will take twice as long to copy. My 2TB external drive has well over 1TB free so no problem there. I'm copying them as is, before making any attempt to move the .lck files.

I might have expected as much. Not all the files would copy over. The bad file was the f011 file. And I'm back to having a beachball cursor anywhere on the screen. What's wrong with this picture? How can I get back to a working cursor so i can see what was actually copied? Why is Macbook not functioning? I positively hate any computer that refuses to respond. What do I have to do, shut it sown agan, power it off? Totally upset! Error code -36 What does that mean? Why isn't this app more robust i.e. copy all of the files it can and not STOP on an error half way through, just report the errors at the end? And why can I not get the beachball to go away???????

Having to restart the computer as nothing works!

Would not restart. Had to power it off.

Tryinmg to copy over the uncopied files again. May have to leave it running as it is cutting into time reserved for other things.

Could not copy -f012 either.

So far it copied all of the -sXXX files which I presume are the system disc and the first 10 fXXX files but has conked out on the f011 and f012 files. Trying to copy the remaining files but it is showing "estimating time remaining ..." for several minutes now. This is VERY frustrating.

Continuing to shoiw "estimating time remaining"

Is there a cancel button on the copy? If so, I suggest you cancel out and do some basic maintenance on the system before you go any further. You may need to do some work on the hard drives first.